


High Flight

by Luna (lunasky)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-10
Updated: 2006-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasky/pseuds/Luna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was Cadman's first solo flight—in a 10,000 year-old flying machine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mona (monanotlisa)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/gifts).



> A/N: I wanted to write porn for monanotlisa. I really did. All I can offer is that with some imagination, the ending could lead to some porn. :) Many thanks to the wonderful eretria for betaing this for me. All remaining mistakes are all mine.

It was barely more than a vibration, hardly a feeling of movement at all when the Jumper lifted up and yet, Laura Cadman felt the first inkling of a rush through her veins.

Up, ever so slowly, up.

Hovering only a few feet in the air, defying all laws of gravity and nature, she could feel the force of the Jumper hanging there at her command.

She was flying!

Gingerly testing the controls, slowly rolling the Jumper from side to side and front to back, she was amazed how instantly it responded; perfectly every time, never crashing to the ground as some secret part of her mind kept believing it would.

Not that she'd ever crashed it before—the last month of flying lessons had gone amazingly smooth. But this was different. Colonel Sheppard wasn't there to will the Jumper to his command; Lorne wasn't sitting next to her to help coax the controls in case they didn't respond. This was her first solo flight—one hundred percent her flying, alone, in a 10,000 year-old flying machine.

She wasn't a pilot and yet, apparently she could be. And the feeling was like nothing she'd ever imagined before.

"Jumper Three, this is Jumper One. Are you going to hover there all day, or do you want to take her up and see what she can do?" Sheppard's voice chided her over the radio.

A grin crept across her face. "On my way, Sir," she replied, pulling back on the controls and bringing the Jumper up, making it glide easily through the air with hardly any effort at all. As if something weighing ten tons and shaped like a tin can could possibly be made to fly around as smoothly as this.

She grinned even wider as she cleared the bay doors.

The jumper soared into the wide, endless blue sky and for one scary moment, the whole thing suddenly seemed a little too much. Climbing to altitude took less than ten seconds and looking out from Atlantis, flying a thousand feet above the ocean, there was only blue meeting blue all along the horizon.

She swallowed hard, suddenly feeling like she'd lost all her bearings. The sky was suddenly too big—endless almost and though she'd never been afraid of heights before, suddenly she couldn't do anything but stare at the water and sky around her.

She tried not to think about the voodoo holding her in the air—intellectually, she understood the physics behind it. There was enough crossover between the different fields of engineering that she had no trouble understanding the technical briefs on the Jumpers and memorizing the crucial parts. Instinctively however, it just didn't feel right that something so heavy, something so cylindrical, could fly through the air like a bird. Planes used the differences in pressure created around the wings as they moved through the air to create lift, but the Jumpers were the ugliest looking airfoils she'd ever seen fly.

Pushing that to the side, she tried not to focus on her fear, not to formulate the words in her mind, as if thinking about it, doubting it, would lead to the Jumper suddenly realizing she had a point and obliging her by plummeting to the ground. Instead, she forced her attention back up, into the cloudless sky. It was another clear, gorgeous afternoon, typical of the weather they enjoyed here. Of the two moons orbiting the planet, Poseidon hung in the sky, visible even during the day, large and round and tinged in red, watching over the ocean.

"How's it going, Cads?" Lorne asked through her ear piece, helping to ground her a little.

She'd hated that nickname when he'd given it to her on the _Daedalus_ eight months ago, on their voyage to the fabled City of the Ancients. Now, it felt familiar and comforting as she remembered the Air Force's fondness for call signs.

It was strange, but of all the things she ever thought she'd get a chance to do, flying had never even entered into the equation. Of course, it only made sense. Once the gene therapy took, it was only logical to train as many people as possible. For some reason though, she got the impression that Lorne and Sheppard had made it their own special project to teach her how to fly.

 _To make a zoomie out of me yet,_ she though wryly.

Nudging the jumper onto the pre-assigned vector, she started to realize why pilots were such a different breed all together. Instead of relying on platoons of soldiers in rank and file, they had to contend with the vastness of the sky. Alone in the jumper, out of reach of all but her instructor's voices, she realized she could plummet the jumper into the ground if she moved her hand just so. By the same token, she could pull it up into the sun, put it into a loop or fly it to the mainland, all with a movement of her hand.

The amount of power…of independence and freedom that gave her was staggering and she hadn't even started to explore what the jumper could do. Her first solo, was supposed to be just that; a take-off and landing.

A baby step into a whole new realm of existence.

And to think she'd scoffed and bristled when Sheppard and Lorne had talked about flying like that; like she'd never experienced the thrill of pushing the envelope before. Before coming here, she'd spent five years studying and working on improvised explosive devices. She'd thought there wasn't anything quite like wearing a bomb suit in 100 degree weather while diffusing artillery shell-based devices embedded in plaster.

She had to admit though; she was starting to understand what they were talking about. This was amazing and thrilling, in a completely different way from what she was used to. She was no longer confined to just a pair of worn combat boots.

"This is amazing," she whispered, wiping her palms on her pants, not even realizing she'd said it out-loud until Lorne responded with a laugh. Jumper One and Two came up in front of her, one on either flank, slowly guiding her out towards the buoy in the ocean that served as a marker for their approach path.

"Why do you think pilots are such cocky bastards all the time?" Lorne replied as he flew forward to take the lead. "You're doing just fine. Just stay on my six."

On her left, Jumper One broke away with a tight turn, circling about so that Sheppard could monitor her approach. "You know what to do, Lieutenant. Just follow Jumper Two and make your approach for landing. Lorne will lead you in and I'll be right behind."

Calling up the HUD, Cadman started going through the mental checklist for take-offs and landings that they'd drilled into her. That was one thing she could always count on for the military; they had lists for everything—and rightly so perhaps. Going through the steps, her sense of order returned, albeit slightly readjusted for the six degrees of freedom she could control.

She was traveling at 6.6 x10-7 times the speed of light, which, looking down at the computer jimmy-rigged to the side, she could see translated to little more than 447 mph. Her first solo would probably be over in less than five minutes. Laura held her breath as she reduced her speed, following the mental checklist of instructions that they'd drilled into her.

Radio—check. "Flight Control, this is Jumper Three on approach for the landing bay."

Sgt Hill's voice responded right away. "Jumper Three, this is Flight. You are cleared for approach behind Jumper Two."

"Roger, Flight." Laura adjusted her approach so that she was following Lorne's path exactly and proceeded with her list.

Power—Check. The Jumper's power cells indicated 98% charged.

Instruments—Check.

Life support—Check.

Approach velocity—Check.

Lorne brought his jumper down through the open bay doors, smoothly and easily and Laura's attention turned to the final task. Going up had been easy—ironically enough, landings were always the hard part.

"Jumper Three, this is Flight. You're cleared for landing. Bring your Jumper into the loading bay once you've cleared the dock."

Laura looked down at the now empty landing dock and turned on the reverse thrusters to slow her Jumper down. She was silently relieved that on top of it all, she wouldn't have to try and park the jumper back into its recharging bay. "Roger Flight. Jumper Three on final approach."

The final checks were done as she came to a stop in mid-air—hovering and trying to keep the Jumper laterally and longitudinally stable as she slowly lowered it down through the bay doors. The right side dropped marginally and she immediately overcompensated to the left. For a heart-stopping moment she thought she might just roll the jumper as it rocked back and forth before finally bringing it back into a neutral position, fifty feet from the ground.

With a sigh of relief, the Jumper made it the rest of the way down without another incident, hovering several feet in the air and with an easy turn, she maneuvered it into the assigned area before landing.

Turning off the thrusters and deactivating the rest of the controls, Laura jumped out of her seat, opened the cargo bay door, and let out a whoop as she saw Lorne coming towards her. Her legs felt like jelly as she raced towards him, the adrenaline in her body making her feel like she was still flying and he easily grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. She let herself be whirled around, all the while laughing and screaming because all the energy inside of her had to be released somehow.

When Lorne finally put her down, she saw the gigantic smile on his face and the fact that he was just as breathless as her. She bent over, trying catch her breath and he rubbed her head affectionately. "Way to go Cads."

She gave him a smile as he pulled out a digital camera. "It's tradition," he said, pointing her to the Jumper. "Ever pilot has to get a picture with the first plane that they fly."

She let him pull her back to the Jumper, her knees still weak from exhilaration and she had to lean against the cold metal of the drive pod in order to stand up straight. The thrill of this flight was something she wasn't soon going to forget.

Lorne set up the camera and looked up at her with a smile. "Okay, ready? One. Two. Three—"

In time with the flash, a blast of freezing cold water sprayed her, taking her completely by surprise. She yelped as she turned around, putting her hands up, trying to deflect the blast—but it was no use. Sheppard held the hose securely, with a huge grin on his face. He had obviously landed, found the emergency fire hose and snuck up behind her.

Only when she was thoroughly drenched did he finally let up.

"Congrats Lieutenant," Sheppard said, with a friendly shoulder grab after he'd tossed the hose aside. "Guess that makes you one of us now."

She tried to eye them both with menace as she peeled off her soaked jacket. Lorne approached Sheppard with the camera, showing off the evidence he'd acquired and Laura was unable to resist the temptation. Still dripping with water and still high on one of the most amazing experiences of her life, she did the only logical thing.

She grinned evilly, approached calmly and dove for the hose. She might be a pilot now, but at the moment, they were back on her turf.


End file.
